Meet the new CEO of Amazon – Andy Jassy

Amazon announced one of the biggest corporate transitions with founder Jeff Bezos moving into the role of executive chairman and Andy Jassy, who heads the cloud business – Amazon Web Services (AWS), stepping into his shoes.

Andy Jassy is a long-time veteran of the company and Jeff Bezos paid him a rich compliment when he announced the change: “Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.”

AWS is a key profit centre for Amazon and reported a revenue of $45.37 billion as per its latest quarterly results.

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Amazon also said that in 2020, it provided more than $1 billion in AWS credits to help early-stage startups accelerate their growth and development.

Here are some of the key highlights and quotes of his career.

• A graduate of Harvard Business School with an MBA, Andy Jassy joined Amazon in 1997.

• He worked as a technical assistant to Jeff Bezos early in his career.

• In 2006, he founded AWS and is a leading player in the cloud market, which intensely competes with Microsoft and Google.

• A sports and music fan, Andy has part ownership in the new Seattle National Hockey League franchise.

During the AWS re:Invent event, the cloud businesses' first-ever digital conference held in December last year, Andy Jassy said,

“Don’t wait too long to reinvent. You need good leadership to be maniacal, relentless, and tenacious about the product and you have to challenge people to get to the truth. To reinvent and change, you need to have the courage. Better experience for customers will always win.”

During an interaction with YourStory, Andy Jassy opined,

“If you want to move to the cloud, I believe the first thing to do would be to align senior management. That is the biggest deterrent today. That’s why only three percent of the world is on the cloud. If you don't get senior management together, it does not happen. To get them aligned you have to create a process and have months of iteration. In the end, it is an aggressive top-down goal.”